Related papers: The Secular Evolution of Disk Structural Parameter…
Dynamical simulations are a fundamental tool for studying the secular evolution of disc galaxies. Even at their maximum resolution, they still follow a limited number of particles and typically resolve scales of the order of a few tens of…
(Abridged) A robust analysis of galaxy structural parameters, based on the modeling of bulge and disk brightnesses in the BVRH bandpasses, is presented for 121 face-on and moderately inclined late-type spirals. Each surface brightness (SB)…
Despite having entered the era of "precision cosmology," the formation of galaxies within the favored CDM cosmological paradigm remains problematic. By relating our N-body/smooth particle hydro-dynamical simulation to an extensive range of…
We explore the secular dynamical evolution of an N-body model of M31 in the presence of a population of 100 dark matter satellites over 10 Gyr. The satellite population has structural and kinematic characteristics modelled to follow the…
We combine deep optical and IR photometry for 326 spiral galaxies from two recent galaxy samples and report that the surface brightness profiles of late-type spirals are best fit by two exponentials. Moreover, the ratio of bulge and disk…
More than half of nearby disc galaxies have pseudobulges instead of classical bulges that are though to be end-products of galaxy mergers. Pseudobulges are presumed to develop overtime as a result of secular evolution of galaxy discs. We…
The emergence of a large-scale stellar bar is one of the most striking features in disc galaxies. By means of state-of-the-art cosmological zoom-in simulations, we study the formation and evolution of bars in Milky Way-like galaxies in a…
We demonstrate that in N-body simulations of isolated disc galaxies there is numerical vertical heating which slowly increases the vertical velocity dispersion and the disc thickness. Even for models with over a million particles in a disc,…
We examine the observable properties of simulated barred galaxies including radial mass profiles, edge-on structure and kinematics, bar lengths and pattern speed evolution for detailed comparison to real systems. We have run several…
We investigate the effects of halo kinematics on the dynamics of stellar discs by simulating the evolution of isolated disc-halo systems from equilibrium initial conditions. Our main results come from four simulations where the initial disc…
We demonstrate that growth of stellar bars in spinning dark matter halos is heavily suppressed in the secular phase of evolution, using numerical simulations of isolated galaxies. In a representative set of models, we show that for values…
We investigate the evolution of galactic disks in N-body Tree-SPH simulations. We find that disks, initially truncated at three scale-lengths, can triple their radial extent, solely driven by secular evolution. Both Type I (single…
Vertically extended, high velocity dispersion stellar distributions appear to be a ubiquitous feature of disc galaxies, and both internal and external mechanisms have been proposed to be the major driver of their formation. However, it is…
To further enhance our understanding on the formation and evolution of bars in lenticular (S0) galaxies, we are undertaking a detailed photometric and spectroscopic study on a sample of 22 objects. Here we report the results of a 2D…
We present results of numerical N-body simulations of a galactic stellar disk embedded into a spherical dark halo. The non-linear dynamics of bending instabilities developing in the disk is studied. The bending modes, axisymmetric and not,…
This paper describes test particle simulations of the response of the outer parts of Galactic disks to barring and spiral structure. Simulations are conducted for cold Mestel disks and warm quasi-exponential disks with completely flat…
In this work we update the L-Galaxies semi-analytic model (SAM) to better follow the physical processes responsible for the growth of bulges via disc instabilities (leading to pseudo-bulges) and mergers (leading to classical bulges). We…
The majority of disk galaxies manifest spirals and/or bars that are believed to result from dynamical instabilities. However, some galaxies have featureless disks, which are therefore inferred to be dynamically stable. Yet despite many…
Using the hydrodynamical (fluid) approximation, we present a self-consistent theoretical framework that couples the origin, evolution and decay of spiral structures to the secular dynamical evolution of their host galactic disks. Our…
In the solar-neighbourhood, older stars have larger random velocities than younger ones. It is argued that the increase in velocity dispersion with time is predominantly a gradual process rather than one induced by discrete events such as…